An inquest at Preston Coroner’s Court in Lancashire, UK has revealed how English language teacher Lara Jones was strangled in an apparently motiveless attack by a hostel security guard while on holiday in Havana. The charity Lara’s Foundation in her memory has been set up to support EFL projects in ‘low-income countries’.

Although Jones was found dead in March 2012, details of her murder – and of the murderer’s confession and secret trial in Cuba – emerged only at September’s inquest, as did Cuban disclosures about the police investigation and autopsy in Cuba.

A referendum on independence for Scotland will take place on 18 September next year, with pundits reluctant to predict the result. What will the Scottish international higher education landscape look like post-referendum in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote for independence?

The four-part documentary Why Don’t You Speak English? recently aired on Channel 4 in the UK. It opens in veteran Esol teacher Anya Williams’s class, which includes students who had been in the UK for at least two years but failed to pick up ‘the most basic English’. There follows a ‘fast track’ for four students – Agnieszka from Poland, Apple (a ‘trailing partner’ from China), masters-qualified oil engineer Fabian (pictured) who fled violence in Colombia, and

UK Finance minister George Osborne, announcing a government spending review in June, told lawmakers, ‘From now on, if [welfare] claimants don’t speak English, they will have to attend language courses until they do.’ He added, ‘If you’re not prepared to learn English, your benefits will be cut,’ promising that this and other welfare changes would save £350 million.

Although the Daily Mail newspaper reported that benefit claimants with poor English ‘will have to take classes to get up to “entry level two” – the standard expected of the nine-year-olds’,